Chezzik

Best advice ever. Thanks! You change that option in the TFCOptions.cfg file. The normal cave-in probability is 1/40. I changed it to 1/1 today, and learned a lot. Warning: Spoilers ahead! When you mine a solid block, it can only cause a cave-in if the block above it is not air, and the block below it is air. This means you can make giant rooms of any size with out any supports. Just dig out the top two layers first, and always dig the top block in the layer, and then the bottom. You can make it 50x50x2 if you want without any supports. After you do this, just dig down, and expand it to 50x50x50, if you want, all without supports. I'm not sure if this is an exploit or not. I kind of doubt that it's functioning as envisioned. As far as digging 2x1 shafts, they can collapse, but won't if you do it correctly. As I illustrated in the last paragraph, if you always dig the top block and then the one below it, then you are safe. I also found that if you dig the bottom one first and then the top, then you are also safe. So how do you cause a cave-in in a 2x1 shaft? Stand at the end, with your face against the wall. Dig 2 forward at foot level. Now, dig the one at face level. This caused cave-ins for me every single time (when changing that option as suggested above). So, when are supports necessary? When you dig up, or when you want to make a dirt roof. That's about it.

Ok, I was quite concerned that the amount of ore had multiplied out of control. I guess no one else cared. I finally went, and loaded up a 48d world in mcEdit and deleted a large amount of the world above y=40. I walked around and observed the veins exposed, both in the wall and the floor. Then I did the same with a 47f world. They seemed rather comparable, so I'm pretty sure that Gorni's experience was just random luck. I even found a canyon in the 47f world that had giant veins meeting each other like the one in Gorni's picture. Screenshots can't prove anything, but I still think they are interesting. Here's the ones I took: http://imgur.com/a/gHSw3

I'm pretty sure that one of the Spotter videos is responsible for spreading the rumor that ore crumbles into cobblestone. I had pretty much accepted it as fact until seeing this thread. Edit: Yep, he states it . Good to know that I'm not going insane

Wow, I expected that if we had anything, it would be mules. They seem much better suited for hauling ore around.

That's not supposed to happen. Definitely sounds like a bug. Which version are you using? I've never seen it happen, but I've pretty much only played version 47f. It could be a new bug in 48c, if that's what you are using. Edit: nevermind you hit the boiling point, as others who posted below me have suggested.

Could someone who has 48c check to see if ore spawn rates are back to normal? It was asked about in the support forums, and there hasn't been any response yet.

Yeah, I've dug in the ground occasionally to see if it was any different than the stones on top. The types I've found so far: Dacite Diorite Slate Quartzite Chert Granite Conglomerate Gneiss Claystone Rhyolite Siltstone Gabbro And, of course, most of the ore I've found is copper. It's all sitting nicely in my chests, waiting for me to get flux!

You must be playing a different game than me. I've wandered all over a square almost 1000 blocks wide, and I just finally found my first surface ore. It was just 3 nuggets. I gave up on that a while ago, and built sluices (up to 10 now) that I can keep busy. About the only biome I haven't explored is a desert. Maybe surface ore is more prevalent there?

So, has a developer commented on this yet (possibly in some other thread?) Is the ore density change intentional?

I thought of a couple others: Forge should state that "any ingots that reach liquid stage are immediately lost unless a fresh ceramic mold exists to catch it." The page already says that the slots on the right exist for ceramic molds, but I think that more text is justified here. Community portal (seen as a link on the left side of every page) is empty. It should probably redirect to the forums. ~~~ The wiki is looking good! A functioning wiki greatly improves the experience for any new players

I did some more testing last night, and it seems like a "single log above the firepit" is not sufficient. If you place the firepit in the corner of your array, then it will always burn out, even when you stack 4 logs in the firepit. My guess is that the 4 blocks orthogonally connected to the firepit in the same y-level must be log stacks, or else it fails to be recognized as a charcoal pit.

The wiki shows an "optimal charcoal pit" as made from 29 lumber piles, but then the text at the top of the page says that "You may now make charcoal pits of almost any shape up to 25m wide and 13m tall, with the firepit centered in the bottom layer.", and suggests that the mechanics have completely changed in build 47. I tried making a few very small charcoal pits. Supposedly, only one wood pile is needed (the one directly above the firepit), but my experience has been that small charcoal pits like that burn out before the 18 hours have elapsed. Is there a minimum size? For small charcoal pits, should logs be placed in the firepit itself to keep it burning longer? Is it important that the firepit is centered in the bottom layer? For example, if I made a 4x4x4 block of log piles, it seems like the easiest way to start it is to remove one of the lower corners of the pile, and replace it with a fireplace. Should a design like that work? The wiki says that all exposed faces of the wood piles must be covered. In one case, as I placed the top wood pile (centered over the firepit), it immediately ignited. After covering it with dirt, it seemed to work, but at the end, the wood was gone, and there was no charcoal. I know that I didn't simply miss it, since I was standing by the charcoal pit when it ended, and part of the roof collapsed. How quickly does the pit need to be covered to work? My friend and I have tried quite a few times to get a successful charcoal pit, and all but one have failed in one way or another, and we're getting quite frustrated by this.

Wow, those are impressive models! I can't wait for these to be in game!

As you said, it's a well known problem. A bug has been filed, and there's already posts about it in this forum. The only workaround I've seen is leaving the world and entering again. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for everyone.

Ok, I thought of trying two bellows, but knew that I couldn't be holding right click on both, so I thought it would make no difference. Now I'm realizing that "holding right click" was probably not actuating the bellows 5+ times per second, even if the animation looked that way!

I was just thinking about what updates I think are needed. I'll try to make a list: 1) Clay (Item) needs a page with an image of clay blocks in the wild. I spent a couple hours looking for Vanilla-style clay before realizing that it has a different texture in this mod. Here's a picture that could work, that I found with a quick google search, or I could make one. Please spare new players of this pain! 2) Unshaped Copper claims that it can be smelted in a firepit. I tried dense woods and peat for fuel, and tried bellows, and still failed to get this to work. I think it's just out of date. 3) Dacite doesn't list Native Copper as possible vein, but that's where I found a copper vein last night. I'm not sure if this is just a random mistake, or if all the ore/stone relationships have changed. 4) Pages for individual stone types (like Dacite for example) say that they can be used for making a prospector's pick. Propicks are metal only now. 5) The second image in bulding a sluice channel indicates that you need air blocks to the left and right of the sluice. The inverse is actually true. If you build it with air blocks like this, the sluice will not work. 6) Pickaxe durability and speed for each type of metal is not found on any page. I'd like the exact numbers, if the developers don't mind us decompiling the class files. My assumption is that higher tier metals have better speed and durability, but couldn't find any page that actually confirms this. 7) Log#Crafting shows logs going straight to planks, without mentioning the "plank" stage. 8) I think a page on Cave-Ins would be justified, showing examples of what is safe and what isn't. It should also mention that ore is destroyed if it falls during a cave-in. The charcoal pit page obviously needs a rewrite, but it says this at the top, so clearly its known. I know there were a few other larger issues that I found, but I'm not recalling them at this time.

Missed this though: Stone propicks don't exist any more. Prospecting is only possible once you've made it to the metal age. If you put a sluice in a region with no ore, you won't know until it takes a suspicious amount of time to find anything worthwhile. Otherwise, it's a pretty nice guide/checklist.

I like the idea of having a guide like this, but I found the guide extremely misleading. I spent more than an hour confused until I realized that the tool gives false negatives. From what I understand, the propick is about 40% likely on any test to give you a false negative. When you find a false negative block, no matter how many times you click it, it will always say "nothing of interest". I'm still a newb myself, but I do not think the pick ever gives false positives, only false negatives. A picture is worth a 1000 words, though. Imagine a 4x4x4 vein near the surface. Imagine you make a few prospecting picks and use them up testing every single spot on the ground. Your result will look something like this: The yellow-brown area is where the actual ore lies. You'll get positive tests up to 12 blocks away from the edge of the vein. At 13 blocks away from the edge, you will only get negative tests. As far as a strategy goes, you could try testing everything in a line, like the OP suggests. The key is to get a rough idea of where the vein is first, then narrow down where the edges lie. Then count 12 from the edges, and dig, just as the OP says.

Well, I bet that the firepit does have to be in the center if you have a 25x25x13 sized stack of wood. Of course, there's little need for doing that much in one batch. Having the firepit on the edge seems that it should work. If a single firepit can light a 25x25x13 stack from the center, then it should be capable of lighting a 13x13x13 cube from the corner. It seems like the most efficient design, if it was like real life fire, would be a comet-shaped stack

Oh, I didn't mean to sound like I was contradicting you. I thought the thread above had already discussed how a vanilla server with TFC was very different than a bukkit server.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that part of my mound was covered with grass, and part was not. So, it's very likely that the simple grass spread may have caused the update. So.... could you answer my other questions: Is there a minimum size? Does the firepit consume logs from the pile for fuel, or do they have to be added to the firepit before closing it in? Is symmetry necessary, or can I put the firepit in the corner? Edit: I'm not trying force dunklesteos to answer me. The question is for anyone out there who has more experience than me

People do it all the time with bukkit servers. You install plugins that disable features, or write the plugin yourself, and then install it on the server that hosts the world you made. For those who haven't seen the Hunger Games minecraft events, they've actually gotten a lot of publicity on reddit. You announce (through reddit or something similar) that you are hosting a special server for the event on an upcoming Saturday (or something), and a whole bunch of strangers all log in at the same time. I've never read the book or watched the movie, but the theme is pretty simple, it's pvp, where last man standing wins. I don't really understand why the OP is asking about implementing it here. Most people in this forum are probably unaware of the Hunger Games minecraft events, and are unlikely to be interested in it. If you think your idea is good, and that it can be easily implemented, then you do it yourself, and then try to notify as many people as possible once you are done. If you want to brainstorm such an idea, you'd probably get a much better response from people that host Hunger Games servers, such as Hunger Games Network. I personally think it's a terrible idea for 2 reasons: 1) There's not a bukkit port of TFC. Somebody will probably make one sometime, and that will open up a whole lot of possibilities that are a lot more interesting than hunger games events. There are other threads on this forum about making a bukkit port, and it's not even sure if the TFC devs are comfortable with it yet. 2) TFC is not part of any modpack, so getting all players to install the client version correctly just for a weekend event is going to be difficult. There's a reason that weekend events like this are almost always done with vanilla clients.

Yes, I've always covered every visible face of each log pile. When I make the small pits, the lumber piles don't disappear. The firepit just goes out, and the logs are left standing there. It's usually about 5 minutes. For the case that the log piles did diasappear, but the charcoal was gone, it was probably about 15 to 20 minutes. I had expected it to be done, or close to done, so I was standing around watching it. Then I heard the crumble sound (probably the same sound as is used for caveins), and saw a dirt block fall in. I was actually watching as it happened. I went over, the wood was gone, and nothing else was inside except for that dirt block. I don't know for sure that it wasn't my fault. I was running from a creeper at the time this happened. Looking back, I'm wondering if none of the dirt fell when the pit ended, but then the creeper ran over the pit, causing the blocks to be re-evaluated, and maybe that is what caused the block to fall. The creeper did not go off, and I'm not sure he even ran over the pit. I was thinking more about preventing an explosion than anything else at the time. I didn't know to watch the smoke at the time (it's something I learned after that trial). Could you confirm that even small pits should work? I cheated in some glass so that I could test different shapes and watch them. I made a few small set ups and every single one of them extinguished before finishing. I want to know if the problem was too little wood, or if those shapes were invalid, because they were non-symetric (or some other reason).

Sorry to resurrect this, but the rocks I get with my pick can't be placed, and can't be used to make stairs, slabs, etc. I assume that they will not work for making a forge either. The only cobblestone-style items I have in my inventory are from when a creeper blew up near me. That caused cube-shaped stones to drop.